


but i'm not sentimental, this skin and bones is a rental

by ghostmachine



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, F/F, with some fluff though who do you think i am
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-11
Updated: 2018-06-11
Packaged: 2019-05-20 19:34:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14900664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostmachine/pseuds/ghostmachine
Summary: You don’t regret your decision, not for a moment; you’re finally, mostly, almost at peace with your past. And yet. There’s a weight that wasn’t there before.Carmilla struggles with life and death and her place in it all. Set after the movie.





	but i'm not sentimental, this skin and bones is a rental

**Author's Note:**

> *trigger warning for depression and brief suicidal ideation. please be safe friends!
> 
> title taken from Where I Belong by Switchfoot

After Styria, the two of you take things one day at a time.

Laura rises early, putting on a pot of coffee that wafts into your waking dreams. You wake slowly and make sure to greet her in the kitchen, a soft kiss to her head or a hand against her warm back. You sit at the small, rickety table and drink your blood while Laura jots down notes, muttering to herself about the story she has planned for the day. And you love to watch her, her hair unkempt, the morning light hitting her through the small window. It hasn’t been easy for you by any means, but you think these are the moments that make it worth it.

 _It_. Immortality once more. You don’t regret your decision, not for a moment; you’re finally, mostly, _almost_ at peace with your past. And yet. There’s a weight that wasn’t there before, one that follows you to the bedroom after breakfast, as you watch Laura dress and do her makeup at the vanity, a darkness that settles deep in your chest when she kisses you softly, leaving to meet Kirsch and Mel for production. And when the door closes, your apartment becomes a prison cell.

As it turns out, you are not coping well.

You know, logically, that you are not depraved.

But still.

You know you are not the things you have done but rather who you choose to be every single day.

But still.

You know you are worthy of this, a life of love and thriving and support.

But still. You’re not sure what to do with it.

Truthfully, you’re still not sure how to navigate this bright and shiny life when for so long you have been the thing that goes bump in the night. You don’t know how to hold it all in your hands, how to reconcile all these lives you’ve lead. You feel powerless to change your circumstance, no matter how good that circumstance may be and no matter how many times you remind yourself you chose this one, for once. You fear the day another change comes for you, eager to take away all you hold dear.

Most days, though, you’re able to shake these thoughts off long enough to crank out a couple hundred words for your doctorate application. You reach out to old professors, the ones at Silas who taught you year after year and never asked questions, for letters of recommendation. You think your essays are shaping up strongly but as the deadline approaches, you can’t help but think it won’t be enough. Surely a handful of degrees from a school swallowed into the depths of hell won’t carry much clout. And you can’t exactly include your supernatural immortality in your personal statement. So you worry. And you consider dropping it altogether.

But you want to be ambitious, for Laura’s sake. You know she wants you to want it all on your own, though, so you work on it, on yourself, slowly (you do, after all, have all the time in the world). You want to be something she’s proud of and, maybe for the first time, you feel an ache to build something with your own two hands, to feel satisfaction instead of horror at what you have done with your life.

You just wish arriving at that feeling didn’t feel like running through quicksand. You wish you weren’t, after all this time, still a little broken thing.

* * *

 

You take to hopping subway trains when you’re restless, and you never look yourself in the mirror. Both afford a certain kind of freedom, a way to leave your own skin, if only for a moment. You find solace in crowds, a million lives lead around you unencumbered by the weight of hundreds of years. The moon landing and the greatest rock shows of all time and the few and far between friendships, yes, but the heartache, the wars and bombs and the loneliness too. It seems one too many lifetimes is taking its toll on your psyche.

It’s not that you want out of this life, not even close. You have something to live for now, and you are inclined to let Laura’s endless optimism be enough for the both of you, at least for now. You think it may simply be that a body is not built for this: living and dying in perpetuity, a constant state of flux. Of course, that’s the law of nature, but surely one set of skin and bones is only meant to handle the cycle once.

You remember vividly the feeling of your heart restarting, pounding in your chest like it had never stopped in the first place. It’s strange, you think, how completely your life has revolved around that beating, how many times you have taken it away with the ripping of teeth, how wildly you wished for mortality. And you remember (because it is so harshly burned into your mind) the image of Laura’s heart in your mother’s hands, her lifeless body in your arms.

All of this starting and stopping is wearing you out.

Or maybe you’re just tired of the taste of blood in your mouth.

* * *

 

Your relationship doesn’t change much—she’s lived with you once as a vampire, she frequently reminds you, and isn’t bothered by it now. But still. There is the issue of eternity and mostly you dance around it, preferring to press the urgency of love into each other.

You feel the weight lifted, however slightly, the most when she’s kissing you, reminding you of the sun even more than when you stand in it. She loves you and she tells you, breathes it into you as much as she can, and it is quite possibly the only thing saving you.

She’s understanding when you can’t talk, and on the days when getting out of bed is too heavy a burden. She brings you little gifts, chocolates and records you’ve loved and lost, and sits in silence as you read to escape. She asks how you are gently, without expecting a real answer, because she reads you well enough to know anyways. On your bad days, you see the desperation in her eyes to make it better.

It’s not your first foray with depression and she knows as much; those years in Paris before Maman found you were an endless night, too many hours to count spent scrubbing at your skin, trying desperately to remove the invisible impression of blood staining your skin. You remember screaming and you remember the emptiness; you remember standing atop the Eiffel Tower and knowing it wouldn’t kill you to fall.

You whisper these memories into the skin of her neck on the nights they overwhelm you, and she brushes the tears from her cheeks when you beg for her forgiveness. For giving her this burden. For hoping she will choose to live with it.

It surprises you every time when insead she chooses to carry it for you.

* * *

 

You keep waiting for things to turn a corner. You’ve experienced this existential pain too many times to count, and always, eventually, it is replaced by numbness. The difference now, you suppose, is that apathy is no longer an option. Not when Laura’s delicate hands keep reaching for yours.

You can count on one hand the amount of times she’s initiated anything more than that, though, and you grieve this loss of mutual intimacy. You want to show her she’s wanted, feel the bloom of blush on her chest, and on the rare times you muster up the courage you relish the feeling of filling her, licking and biting at her pulse point, praying for her to heal you. You’ve never been a crier during sex but you remember how it was before, mere weeks ago, when the blood rushed to your head, pounding in your ears as she made love to you and you can’t help the burning in your eyes when she presses kisses to your neck, when you push her away.

Each time you roll away from her, face the window and hope to god she doesn’t leave you. It’s only when she wraps her arms around your waist, whispers forever, that you remember this time is different.

* * *

You end up applying to three doctorate programs in Toronto, and the decisions all come within a week of each other. You’re accepted to two and wait on the third, your top choice, by pacing the apartment and baking too many cookies. That nagging sense of undeservedness sneaks up on you as the hours tick by. Surely one more good thing is too much to ask for.

When the email finally comes, early Friday morning, Laura looks over your shoulder as you open it with shaky hands. You suck in a breath when you find out you’re accepted.

Laura is over the moon, wrapping her arms around your neck and pressing kisses all over your face. “We have to go out tonight to celebrate!” she exclaims, and then, quieter, brushing a lock of hair behind your ear, “I’m so proud of you, baby.”

You think her love alone has made it all worth it. All this living and dying finally revealed some purpose, a hundred and hundred and hundred years more leading you straight to her. You don’t believe anything’s meant to be and you don’t believe there’s anyone to thank, but Laura’s skin is warm and her pulse is strong against you and that, you think, is enough to feel grateful for.

So you let her take you to dinner and you tell her your ideas for your dissertation topic over dinner and a glass of wine (something about divine evil and the power of human optimism), and you wonder how her cheeks don’t hurt from grinning at you.

You feel hope like the forgotten beating of your heart.


End file.
